Superman isn’t good or special because he’s an alien who crashes on Earth and ends up being incredibly powerful. He’s special because after all that he becomes someone who always does the right thing because he was raised by a couple of decent people from Kansas. That’s it.

He is someone with the power to be the most selfish being in all of existence, and he decides to be selfless because he was raised by a couple of kindly farmers. And the beautiful idea behind him is that we don’t need to be bulletproof to be that way — we just have to be decent people.

Eclectic Method’s tribute to Jon Stewart on The Daily Show is hypnotic and great. It mostly reminds me of the rhythm we the viewers have with the show over the years. SOB.

Kerry and Kevin Conran, the brothers that made Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, saw that film both hinder their careers and inspire several filmmakers. Olly Richards at The Telegraph looks at how that happened. It’s a really interesting look into how Hollywood works: the Conrans aren’t natural networkers, the budget for the film was mysteriously larger than what they paid to make it (making it look like a financial flop), and how studios look at fresh new work.

Once I read a review of one of my short stories, and the reviewer said that he was glad to see that Indians went through the universal experience. This was problematic for a lot of reasons, not least that the characters weren’t generically Indian, and of course they have the universal experience, what do we think ‘universal’ means?

Normality is key. Time to normalise. Shonda Rimes, the show runner of Scandal, talks about normalising television till it represents a world she sees and I think that is a valiant fight, one that is more important than calling for diverse books. Because the more we celebrate diverse books, the less chance we have of non-white people seeing the experiences, wants, likes, looks and habits of non-whites as normal.

Foz Meadows talks about the first two chapters of Seth Dickinson’s The Traitor Baru Cormorant:

It’s queer tragedy porn in a fantasy context, and from what I’ve been told about how the book ends, that never really changes; arguably gets worse, in fact. And while I applaud Seth Dickinson for wanting to tell a story about how Homophobia Is Bad, complete with a cast of characters who are queer and female and POC, I can’t applaud his apparent decision to do so by making said characters suffer unbearably because of their orientation, the better to let the audience know that Homophobia Is Wrong.

The problem, then, is that The Traitor Baru Cormorant comes across as being a novel about queer oppression that is – whether intentionally or not – written for a straight audience: that is, for people who can find novelty and drama in stories about unrelenting queer oppression because they’ve never personally experienced it, whereas those of us who have just want, by and large, to read about queer people being people, preferably complex ones who get their fair share of happy endings rather than the traditional tragedy.

Related

Post navigation

2 thoughts on “The Week in Review: July 19th, 2015”

I feel really sad about Cherie Currie and Joan Jett’s reactions to this whole thing. I love The Runaways, and it bums me out that they can’t respond with support for their former bandmate. Even if they legitimately were not present or don’t remember, they could not be jerks and say, I don’t remember, but all these people say it was happening, and I fully believe them, and I support Jackie. Like what would that COST them. Bleh.

On the other hand, it’s nice to see Emma Stone saying she learned something from this whole experience. I hope that’s true, I mean I hope that would affect her behavior going forward. Also I really very much wish that she would stop being in Woody Allen movies. That’d be swell.

That video with Jimmy Fallon and them was absolutely delightful. I like how hard Amy Poehler cracks up when Tina Fey says poop. And I especially like how Tina Fey and Amy Poehler take the opportunity to ruthlessly make fun of Jimmy Fallon when it’s his turn to tell the story. I totally believed Amy Poehler would help Yoko Ono cross the street, though. Once my pal Tim was hailing a cab and Amy Poehler was ALSO hailing a cab, and she tried to give the cab to my friend because he was there first, but the cabbie locked the doors on him and refused to take him and would only take Amy Poehler, and to resolve this stalemate he told Amy Poehler to just take the cab.

Right? Why is the cost of support and belief in something like this so high that they won’t pay it?

WHY IS ANYBODY IN WOODY ALLEN MOVIES ANYMORE? (Besides, you know, being a working actor who wants to eat and Allen movies, infuriatingly, are still very well-funded. THIS SYSTEM BENEFITS HIM AND I AM NOT OKAY WITH THAT.)